[blackshoe]

Al_U_Card, on Jul 29 2008, 06:40 AM, said:

***** Mike, the day I say "My country, right or wrong." I guess that the US will have invaded and conquered us (for our oil/water/poutine) and I'll be "proud" to be an American.

I daresay the US has no interest in invading Canada. What would be the point?

As for the quote, perhaps you should contemplate the whole thing:

Senator CARL SCHURZ, on remarks in the Senate, February 29, 1872, said:

The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, “My country, right or wrong.” In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.

[Al_U_Card]

blackshoe, on Jul 29 2008, 01:23 PM, said:

Al_U_Card, on Jul 29 2008, 06:40 AM, said:

***** Mike, the day I say "My country, right or wrong." I guess that the US will have invaded and conquered us (for our oil/water/poutine) and I'll be "proud" to be an American.

I daresay the US has no interest in invading Canada. What would be the point?

As for the quote, perhaps you should contemplate the whole thing:

Senator CARL SCHURZ, on remarks in the Senate, February 29, 1872, said:

The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, “My country, right or wrong.” In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.

The largest petroleum reserves in the world?

The largest fresh-water reserves in the world?

The most "american" country on the planet?

The easiest to control and exploit?

The only downside is that it would be harder to keep down the negative press (overtly). In Iraq they have it pretty much made in the (lack of) shade.

[jtfanclub]

Al_U_Card, on Jul 29 2008, 04:11 PM, said:

The only downside is that it would be harder to keep down the negative press (overtly). In Iraq they have it pretty much made in the (lack of) shade.

There wouldn't be any negative press. It wouldn't be an invasion, after all. We'd just come in to "protect Canadian interests" and later we'd have a "merger".

If you think that you'd see any North American (or even European) mainstream negative press, I think you have an overly sunny view of our 1st Admendment.

[luke warm]

jtfanclub, on Jul 29 2008, 04:30 PM, said:

Al_U_Card, on Jul 29 2008, 04:11 PM, said:

The only downside is that it would be harder to keep down the negative press (overtly).  In Iraq they have it pretty much made in the (lack of) shade. 

There wouldn't be any negative press. It wouldn't be an invasion, after all. We'd just come in to "protect Canadian interests" and later we'd have a "merger".

If you think that you'd see any North American (or even European) mainstream negative press, I think you have an overly sunny view of our 1st Admendment.

i think the planning is already in the works, and it includes mexico... union of north america coming soon to a theater near you

[Al_U_Card]

The duality inherent in our existence allows for the inclusion of both good and evil in all circumstances.

Hybridization is always more viable and vigorous than inbred sameness.

Homogenization, for the purposes of uniformity and the maintenance of control are the downside.

We can resist and even convert this as long as we have an open approach to the situation. Flexibility and action result in an overwhelming tide of events that can only bring about our eventual evolution to a state that surpasses our current situation.

Do not accept the status quo. Don't accept things as they are presented if their face value belies their underlying reality. Be strong and resolute.

[Winstonm]

The best advice is to listen to those who lived under and knew firsthand the consequences of warfare to a democracy:

Quote

James Madison, father of the Constitution, warned that, "No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." Alex de Tocqueville echoed: "No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic society." If the United States Supreme Court neglects to reverse Al-Marri, the case will stand as a judicial sacrilege not only to the Constitution's understanding of "war," but also to twin truths of the Declaration of Independence: that all men are born with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that do not depend on the sufferance of the president; and, that legitimate governments are established to secure those rights, not to build empires or to go "abroad in search of monsters to destroy," in the words of President John Quincy Adams

And if you think allowing the executive sole authority to hold "enemy combattants", you may consider the following.

Quote

Foreign-owned hotels in China face the prospect of "severe retaliation" if they refuse to install government software that can spy on Internet use by hotel guests coming to watch the summer Olympic games, a U.S. lawmaker said Tuesday.


Rocky Mountain News, October 11, 2007:
The National Security Agency and other government agencies retaliated against Qwest because the Denver telco refused to go along with a phone spying program, documents released Wednesday suggest. .

The "exceptionalism" of America is its form of government - change that and there is only a presidential monarchy engaged in empire building, little different than King George.

[PassedOut]

Even during a "public trial" it can be difficult to understand what is really going on: Trial Enters Secret Session to Hear Defense Testimony

Quote

Harry H. Schneider Jr., a defense lawyer, held up a book and said he wanted to ask Mr. McFadden a question based on it.

There was a stir at the prosecution table.

“I’m told it’s classified, so I can’t ask you,” Mr. Schneider said.

The book was the 9/11 Commission Report, a former best seller.

Yes, a Kafka-esque trial for sure.

[PassedOut]

The New York Times has reviewed a new book documenting how the Bush administration -- under Cheney's direction -- pushed the US into lawlessness, false imprisonment, and torture: The Dark Side

Quote

The tactics the president denounced were precisely those he had authorized and encouraged in the growing network of secret prisons around the world. The detainees in these scattered sites — many of them innocent — have been held for months and years without charges, without lawyers, without notification to their families and often without respite from torture for weeks and months at a time. The Bush administration’s response to the Abu Ghraib scandal was not to stop the behavior, but to try to hide it more effectively.

Reaction to the criminality of the Bush administration does not reflect liberal or conservative thinking. It simply reflects one's reaction to evil.

Quote

Among the most courageous opponents of the use of torture was a small group of lawyers working within the Bush administration — conservative men, loyal Republicans, who in the face of enormous pressure to go along attempted to use the law to stop what they considered a series of policies that were both illegal and immoral: Alberto Mora, the Navy general counsel, who tried to work within the system to stop what he believed were renegade actions; Jack Goldsmith, who became the head of the Office of Legal Counsel in 2003 and sought to revoke the Yoo memo of 2002, convinced that it had violated the law in authorizing what he believed was clearly torture; and Matthew Waxman, a Defense Department lawyer overseeing detainee issues, who sought ways to stop what he believed to be illegal and dangerous policies. Waxman summoned a meeting of high-ranking military officers and Defense Department officials (including the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force), all of whom supported the restoration of Geneva Convention protections. Waxman was quickly hauled up before Addington and told that his efforts constituted “an abomination.” All of these lawyers, and others, soon left the government after being deceived, bullied, thwarted and marginalized by the Cheney loyalists. [Italics mine.]

Dick Cheney explained the precise nature of the dangers of releasing many of those he caused to be imprisoned and tortured:

Quote

Even releasing detainees whom they knew to be entirely innocent was dangerous, since once released they could talk. “People will ask where they’ve been and ‘What have you been doing with them?’” Cheney said in a White House meeting. “They’ll all get lawyers.”

In my opinion, apologists for the Bush-Cheney regime can no longer hide behind claims of simple ignorance. There is something morally deficient in anyone who continues to support either man.

[blackshoe]

While I doubt I (or anyone else who is simply a member of the electorate, not privy to "government secrets") has anywhere near complete information, the previous post makes it look to me like Cheney is out of control, and Bush may or may not be an active participant. It may be that he simply isn't trying to rein Cheney in. I'm not a Bush apologist - not hauling Cheney up short is nearly as bad as actively participating in Cheney's rampage - but it's not clear to me exactly what Bush's involvement is.

If Cheney's "explanation" was accurately reported, it clearly does not justify continuing to hold those to whom it refers.

I found this interesting, in view of the current situation:

Quote

According to The Daily Princetonian, after the 2000 presidential election, "post-election polls found that, in the wake of Clinton-era scandals, the single most significant reason people voted for Bush was for his moral character."

See "Political Ramifications" at http://en.wikipedia....ment_of_Clinton

[Winstonm]

Quote

In my opinion, apologists for the Bush-Cheney regime can no longer hide behind claims of simple ignorance. There is something morally deficient in anyone who continues to support either man.

More and more I lay the blame at the doorstep of Cheney's office, and once again I wonder where are the investigations and impeachment hearings when Sy Hersch writes that Cheney held a meeting in his office at which time the idea of a true "false flag" operation to build Iranian look-a-like boats in the U.S. and have Navy Seals dressed as Iranians attack a U.S. ship to provoke war with Iran, and Salon runs an article that questions the ABC News sources who pronounced totally without merit that Iraq had been tied to the anthrax letter attacks after 9-11.

Are these really the people to whom you want to grant more unchecked power, or is it time to rethink who should hold the powers already usurped by the executive branch by the claims of national security need?

[blackshoe]

Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution said:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

It would be interesting to see the outcome of a suit brought before the Supreme Court on the grounds that the current administration has violated this Amendment.

[Winstonm]

I am fairly certain that Kafkaesque is the correct term, because I woke up one morning in January of 2001 and the vice-president of these United States had changed into a monstrous vermin.

[PassedOut]

And the verdict is in: Guilty: 5 months left in sentence

Quote

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Rejecting a prosecution request for a severe sentence, a panel of military officers sentenced the convicted former driver for Osama bin Laden to five and a half years in prison on Thursday. The sentence means that the first detainee convicted after a war crimes trial here could complete his punishment by the end of this year.

The military judge, Capt. Keith J. Allred of the Navy, had already said that he planned to give the driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, credit for at least the 61 months he has been held since being charged, out of more than six years in all. That would bring Mr. Hamdan to the end of his criminal sentence in five months.

NEXT?

[jtfanclub]

And it cost the government how much to prosecute him?

Can we get our money back?

For those of you who don't know, the original prosecutor refused to prosecute Hamdan because the prosecutor thought Hamdan was a small fish and not worth his time and effort. The government replaced him.

[Al_U_Card]

He may also have failed the "I don't recall being able to remember that, if indeed it ever happened." Justice dept. test.

[kenberg]

jtfanclub, on Aug 7 2008, 10:58 PM, said:

And it cost the government how much to prosecute him?

Can we get our money back?

For those of you who don't know, the original prosecutor refused to prosecute Hamdan because the prosecutor thought Hamdan was a small fish and not worth his time and effort. The government replaced him.

I don't think I want my money back here. I see it as a trial successfully concluded. Now we can argue about whether the crime of "aiding in the commission of terrorism", if committed on foreign soil by a foreign person aiding someone who regards himself as being at war with us, should be a crime punishable in the US. In fact, that was Mike's original question here.

I very much believe we need a serious discussion of how to deal with terrorists. We have little experience with it. If we believe we can make planning/aiding/supporting terrorism a US crime when the planning is abroad and the action is here, then the trial seems proper enough. We do plan on shooting Osama, do we not? Obviously this is a lesser fish, and that can be dealt with by imposing a lesser sentence. Why exactly is this wrong?

[Winstonm]

It is difficult to address all these misconceptions in one post but I shall try.

Quote

Obviously this is a lesser fish, and that can be dealt with by imposing a lesser sentence. Why exactly is this wrong?

First of all, being held without charges and subject to torture for coerced confessions is against U.S. law and international law. The fact that we are simply mimicking Stalin show trials in order to validate a criminal "war on terror" should not make one "Proud to be an American".

Quote

I don't think I want my money back here. I see it as a trial successfully concluded.

Then the concept of the rule of law must not hold has much sway with you as the law of vengeance and obfuscation of truth.

Quote

Now we can argue about whether the crime of "aiding in the commission of terrorism", if committed on foreign soil by a foreign person aiding someone who regards himself as being at war with us, should be a crime punishable in the US. In fact, that was Mike's original question here.

I very much believe we need a serious discussion of how to deal with terrorists. We have little experience with it.

Terrorism It is not a war or an act of war. Terrorism is a crime - simple as that.
If you don't believe me, here is the government's own think tank - RAND - and their study on how to fight terrorism:

Quote

The study, "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al-Qaeda," written by terrorism experts Seth Jones and Martin Libicki, followed more than 600 terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, over the long-term. The report concluded that the administration's war on terrorism has not significantly degraded al-Qaeda and that the group has morphed into a more formidable enemy. In fact, al-Qaeda has perpetrated more attacks after September 11, 2001 than before it.

RAND deduced that the best way to kill a terrorist group is to capture or kill its leaders. This task is best carried out, according to the study, by law enforcement, intelligence, and, if needed, troops from the local country. Instead of giving terrorists the exalted status of warriors, they should be deemed criminals. In other words, the authors conclude that in most past cases in which terrorist groups have been defeated by getting their leaders, local law enforcement did the job. They say that when troops are needed, local troops have a better understanding of the culture and terrain and thus have more legitimacy than do U.S. forces. In fact, the study says that the presence of U.S. forces on Muslim soil can create more terrorists to fight; thus the authors argue that the U.S. military should confine itself to training the locals.

It is nice when government-paid researchers can provide empirical data to confirm what should have been obvious to any informed citizen years ago! After a major terrorist crime, such as the one on 9/11, the objective should be to get the perpetrators. The U.S. government should not militarily invade countries and try to change their form of government, economic system or money-making activities (for example, growing opium). This applies to both Afghanistan and Iraq.

I've been saying this all along and now that RAND agrees I rest my case.

[jtfanclub]

kenberg, on Aug 8 2008, 01:08 PM, said:

Obviously this is a lesser fish, and that can be dealt with by imposing a lesser sentence. Why exactly is this wrong?

Because we spent millions of dollars and five years of work for nothing. If he'd been found not guilty, it still would have been December until we released him. He simply wasn't worth prosecuting.

[pigpenz]

jtfanclub, on Aug 8 2008, 08:07 PM, said:

kenberg, on Aug 8 2008, 01:08 PM, said:

Obviously this is a lesser fish, and that can be dealt with by imposing a lesser sentence. Why exactly is this wrong?

Because we spent millions of dollars and five years of work for nothing. If he'd been found not guilty, it still would have been December until we released him. He simply wasn't worth prosecuting.

but he was found not guilty of the more serious charges...bascially he was found guilty of being Bin Ladens driver.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on Aug 8 2008, 06:56 PM, said:

It is difficult to address all these misconceptions in one post but I shall try.

Quote

Obviously this is a lesser fish, and that can be dealt with by imposing a lesser sentence. Why exactly is this wrong?

First of all, being held without charges and subject to torture for coerced confessions is against U.S. law and international law. The fact that we are simply mimicking Stalin show trials in order to validate a criminal "war on terror" should not make one "Proud to be an American".

Quote

I don't think I want my money back here. I see it as a trial successfully concluded.

Then the concept of the rule of law must not hold has much sway with you as the law of vengeance and obfuscation of truth.

Quote

Now we can argue about whether the crime of "aiding in the commission of terrorism", if committed on foreign soil by a foreign person aiding someone who regards himself as being at war with us, should be a crime punishable in the US. In fact, that was Mike's original question here.

I very much believe we need a serious discussion of how to deal with terrorists. We have little experience with it.

Terrorism It is not a war or an act of war. Terrorism is a crime - simple as that.
If you don't believe me, here is the government's own think tank - RAND - and their study on how to fight terrorism:

Quote

The study, "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al-Qaeda," written by terrorism experts Seth Jones and Martin Libicki, followed more than 600 terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, over the long-term. The report concluded that the administration's war on terrorism has not significantly degraded al-Qaeda and that the group has morphed into a more formidable enemy. In fact, al-Qaeda has perpetrated more attacks after September 11, 2001 than before it.

RAND deduced that the best way to kill a terrorist group is to capture or kill its leaders. This task is best carried out, according to the study, by law enforcement, intelligence, and, if needed, troops from the local country. Instead of giving terrorists the exalted status of warriors, they should be deemed criminals. In other words, the authors conclude that in most past cases in which terrorist groups have been defeated by getting their leaders, local law enforcement did the job. They say that when troops are needed, local troops have a better understanding of the culture and terrain and thus have more legitimacy than do U.S. forces. In fact, the study says that the presence of U.S. forces on Muslim soil can create more terrorists to fight; thus the authors argue that the U.S. military should confine itself to training the locals.

It is nice when government-paid researchers can provide empirical data to confirm what should have been obvious to any informed citizen years ago! After a major terrorist crime, such as the one on 9/11, the objective should be to get the perpetrators. The U.S. government should not militarily invade countries and try to change their form of government, economic system or money-making activities (for example, growing opium). This applies to both Afghanistan and Iraq.

I've been saying this all along and now that RAND agrees I rest my case.

You address no misconceptions whatsoever.

You address: This is a lesser fish. This is not a misconception.

You address: It can be dealt with by a lesser sentence. Not a misconception either.

You address: I don't think I want my money back. I am better qualified than you to say whether or not I want my money back. You are qualified to say if you want your money back.


You address my assertion: We can argue about whether his actions should be a crime. I believe we can, and should, argue about that. I have no misconception here. I regard it as important to decide what constitutes a crime in this area.

You disagree with my views, that's fine. To call my views misconceptions is rhetoric rather than logic, to say you are addressing any misconceptions that I have is false. Disagreeing with you is not the same as having misconceptions. Not at all.